Offers...but not accepting (updated in replies - part 2)

[mrsukyankee]

We've received two offers - neither of which we're accepting (we've countered). One was £145,000 under our asking price and the other was £95,000 under. Our agent has told both of them that we're not accepting offers much below our asking price and that we've already turned down offers around theirs. We need to get the higher offer up £50,000 to accept it.  We're not asking an outrageous sum as what we're hoping for fits with the comps in the area (it's actually under the comps of the area). Here's hoping.

[lilac05]

Good luck!! I hope one of them accepts your offer.

Just a thought on comps. Have you looked closely at them yourself or had another agent look at them? When we tried to sell our last house, our agent presented comps and ran them every week to support our price. She was insistent that we were appropriately priced, even though we weren’t getting any offers (& one super lowball one). I would challenge her when I saw something that looked like a close comp come on the market below our price, and she’d say “Oh, that’s not comparable because XYZ.” We eventually had two other agents run comps and both showed that we were overpriced. She was cherry picking comps to support a higher price. She had sold a previous home of ours within hours in a fairly slow market, so we trusted her. It wasn’t malicious, she just wanted us to get the most out of our house as possible. (We ended up dropping to the price supported by the other agents’ comps, listed FSBO, and had 2 full-price offers in 2 days.)

I know your market/sales process is very different, and I have no idea if this is relevant to you at all. I just wanted to share what happened with us, as before that, I always thought that “running comps” was a more black & white process that wasn’t really variable. That assumption led to the house sitting on the market many months instead of selling almost immediately.

[mrsukyankee]

lilac05, we've been running the comps ourselves which is why we were okay with dropping the price a bit but we should be getting our minimum price and no lower based on what has been selling and where (same size houses with less land/no garage/not modernised are selling for more than our minimum price). We are also not in NEED of selling though I really want to sell, so we don't want to accept below our minimum.

[thatgirl2478]

I just wonder why people think they can low ball you by THAT much... I don't know much about realestate in your part of the world, but I know here that most people get about 95% of their listing price and you'd have to have a very compelling reason to go lower.

[mrsukyankee]

May 14, 2019 20:11:51 GMT -5 thatgirl2478 said:

I just wonder why people think they can low ball you by THAT much... I don't know much about realestate in your part of the world, but I know here that most people get about 95% of their listing price and you'd have to have a very compelling reason to go lower.

That's the norm here as well. It's just very weird and the second time this is happening. Argh. 

Update One: On the positive side, the higher bid came up £25,000 so closer to our minimum. They are being told it's not enough.

We did decide that if we do need/want to accept an offer lower than our minimum, then we'll be putting ourselves in a chain (right now we know we can buy what we want if we get our minimum but uncertain if not) - so that means we'd accept the offer, not take it off the market and put an offer in on a house to see if we can buy it (the plan was to wait until we finish selling, rent something short-term and be cash buyers).

[calico]

Good grief! I hope you get a GOOD offer soon.

[ssmjlm]

Your real estate market sounds very stressful. I hope you get a good offer soon!

I hated selling and we didn't go through half of what you're describing. I would be a mess.

[mrsukyankee]

May 16, 2019 8:35:10 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Your real estate market sounds very stressful. I hope you get a good offer soon!

I hated selling and we didn't go through half of what you're describing. I would be a mess.

Last night our tenant in the other house we're selling stated he'd move out after the sale - that freaked me out as we gave him a move out date of 1 June in an email on 29 April. I wrote him a reply with the quoted email (he's on month to month). It work me up at 4am again. Luckily, he replied that he'd be out by 1 June and have his cleaner in to make it look a bit nicer. Phew. I hope it happens.

The months of all of this are definitely taking a toll - I think I've aged during it (definitely gained a bit of weight and lost a lot of sleep).

[mrsukyankee]

Update 2: the second potential buyer brought their offer up to the same as the first buyer w/o hearing what the first buyer had offered. So, now both of them are still below our minimum but we can play them off each other. We may be able to achieve our minimum. Wahoo!

[aprilsails]

Good luck! I hope they both move on up!

[jamaicam]

Eek, I really hope this works out for you.

[whitemerlot]

I’m crossing my fingers for you!